Slow But Steady Progress

I've worked on the next session of the Collage Breakthrough course (Lesson 3) over more than one day. We're still using 3 pieces of paper representing all three values and either two patterned and one quiet or two quiet and one patterned paper. This time though, we were encouraged to overlap the various shapes and not fill the 4" square totally, leaving blank areas to add "finishing touches". Still having a little trouble working in my green scraps on all so settled on the ones on the right side working together differently from the ones on the left.

So what are "finishing touches"? These are circles or Asemic writing done with gold, black, or white paint onto tissue paper so that their placement can be auditioned before gluing down. She shows how the excess tissue paper can be scraped away if you don't like the look of the shadowing effect. Well, I watched the video of the technique but had no desire to do pages of the three different colors and decided I'd deal with it later. In the meantime, I viewed how others in the class were doing this and could see how effective adding a gold accent that filled part of the blank areas and spilled over onto the collage was. Still didn't want to mess with making these. Then a lightbulb went on; I remembered a translucent plastic shopping bag with gold swirls and stars that I'd used on an art journal spread. Oh yeah! A quick answer to my problem. I quickly cut out a swirl to audition how it would work and it would work great.

I held off on finishing up this step as time was running out for watching the last of the videos before they disappear after tomorrow. Each lesson is a 30 minute recorded class followed the next day with a live one hour Q & A and demo session which is also recorded to watch later. You can guess which I do. So this week has been devoted to the two lesson 4 videos and the two bonus lesson videos plus one last video that was a cross between two lengthy "gallery" shows of student work and promoting her next step collage course which comes with a hefty price. (I'm good for now.) I had time after that last video to finish cutting and applying the finishing touches to my lesson 3 page and I'm pretty pleased with the result. I was pretty sure glue stick, which we've been using throughout this series, was not going to work on the plastic bag; a quick check proved me right. I'm pretty sure I used gel medium on that journal spread but didn't want to deal with the mess and cleanup that would generate. So I pulled out my trusty YES paste which worked nicely.

I've made a start on the blue knee high socks, finally mastering the tricky Eastern cast-on which makes a seamless join between the sole and the top of the sock. Normally when you knit in the round, it's like working back and forth on straight needles, except you go round and round without turning your work and have a hole in the middle. This cast-on eliminates the hole which would have to be closed up later. Since I discovered I had two sets of the required size of needles, I decided to work on both socks at the same time to more easily end up with soles and tops the same length.

Increasing stitches from 8 to 56 for the toe - ready to start ribbing

I'm working on being a little more balanced with how I spend my days. I'm so guilty of being all or nothing when it comes to things I want to do, which means I'll lose track of time when I get engrossed in something which then leaves no time in the day for anything else. And if I don't perceive that I have a big chunk of time to do something, I end up not doing anything at all. It would be easy to get to the end of the day, look over at my knitting and sigh, thinking there's no time left or I'm too tired. But I'm working on snatching small moments in between the big ones. The knitting on the socks is getting worked in this way: a few rows after breakfast before heading upstairs, a few more after lunch while watching one of my news shows. More in the evening if the shows I'm watching don't require my rapt attention while dealing with these increases. While some days I may be spending an hour or more on the collage class early in the afternoon, I also have found myself unexpectedly drawn into the studio for a few minutes to pull a few paper rectangles for one square on the page before continuing on to where I was originally off to. I'm also finding myself grabbing a small project like updating the blank book I'm using to record my yarns and care instructions in order to add one or two things while watching the tv.  I can get a lot done over the course of the day if I just become aware of these odd small moments and what I might fill them with. Very gratifying.

A part of me wants to knit all day sometimes - that all or nothing tendency I have. But I have other things to tend to as well, that need to balance my time throughout the day. As I think about my resolution word of realign, that need to find balance may be key. All or nothing just won't do.

'Tis Done At Last!

"Adrift" 24" x 26" - Sheila Mahanke Barnes ©2018

Another exhibit, another open house on the horizon and "Adrift" is ready! I dropped it off this morning, along with another piece, my contributions to the summer exhibit at The Power House - "Ode to Water". As the call for entry stated, "We are looking for works that celebrate water, Lake Pend Oreille and the boating season" because, well, we're pretty much all about the water come summer. And as I think I said before, I needed motivation to complete this quilt which I have worked on in fits and starts and long gaps in between since September of 2014. The shibori fabric was done in August of 2013 and a year later I'd paired it with the hand-dyed piece at the top. I let it intimidate me off and on over the next few months as I slowly got a handle on how to quilt it. In February of 2015, I was asking my art group for help, knowing that it needed more than the quilting and a few leaves floating on the water. In March 2016 I was back with the art group with a breakthrough but needing more help.

The original willows leaves were ditched for these batik ones

I brought it home from that meeting, rolled on a pool noodle and found I could not face it time and again. But with this enforced deadline and a renewed attitude, it was time to get it out again and resolve those demons that kept me second guessing every step of the way. That two year hiatus was worth the wait because I had not been idle in my thinking about the leaf placement up in the left corner and my foggy mind had cleared. It was pretty much full steam ahead, and with a purpose.

But boy did I cut it close! I spent more time working on it on Monday than I've been able to make myself work in a day in a long time. Sunday's output made it clear that the hand-couched grasses were taking longer than anticipated plus I kept needing to add more (and actually having fun with this part). I refused to quit until they were all on and then addressed the edge finish. I simply could not leave that for Tuesday, my last day to work, along with attaching the sleeve, taking pics and filling out paperwork. I'd already done a loose zigzag stitch around the outside and planned to stitch the braid along the edge, but that zigzag turned out not to be enough. I experimented with a few ideas geared to attaching the braid to something that would wrap around the edge, but ended up just doing a round of more tightly spaced zigzags. It was tricky keeping from stretching the edges as I did a double row of straight stitch through the braid, but luckily, it came out fairly even and any ripple steamed out.

detail of bushes stamped on after quilting

Still nervous about my shrinking timeline, I saw I had just enough time left to cut and stitch the sleeve. It had been so long since I'd layered this up that I had no idea if I had more of the backing fabric left. But I had set aside what I'd cut off during the squaring up process and low and behold, as I unfolded the backing that had been turned over the batting to the front, I found that I'd taken care of the sleeve issue by leaving enough extra backing on one side to cut the sleeve from. That was a hallelujah moment for sure! The sleeve was quickly cut and sewn and pinned to the back before quitting for the day.

Couching stitches atypically showing on the back.

And so on Tuesday, the day before it would be delivered to the exhibit site, "Adrift" got its sleeve sewn in place, was given a good steaming and a photo shoot, and its label inked on the back. Yes, I keep thinking I am getting lazy about some of these things like making a separate label to be sewn on the back, but maybe it is just being more expedient. I'm surely not quite as neat and tidy on the back as I used to be when I knew a quilt would be inspected both front and back by quilt show judges. There was a time when I definitely would have carefully traveled that couching thread between the top and backing so that it did not show. The busy backing print helps disguise some of it, but in truth, I could hear my "I don't care" mantra kicking in as I couched away. Time was of the essence!

My other entry - "Far From the Midwest Prairie" ©2007

So it was with a great deal of pride and relief that I loaded up the car this morning with quilts and paperwork and dropped them off well within the time limit. It really is a bit of a boost to my ego when I can meet these deadlines and am happy with the work. Of course, I KNOW I can do this sort of thing if I just apply myself, but it doesn't hurt to prove it to myself every now and then!

If you are in the area, please stop by the opening reception on Friday and say hi.

 

Down the Internet Rabbit Hole

I mentioned back when I was finishing up that Inktober sketch challenge that I got sucked down a research rabbit hole while looking up some info for a little family history project. As I wrapped it up last week, I got sucked in again as I rediscovered a source for free census records and got to comparing info on them with my notes from various family members and all too limited dating and descriptions in photo albums. It's an amazing experience to rebuild someone's life from information like this, and try to imagine what some life events must have been like to live through during a different time. Here's the family member I was focusing on, my maternal grandmother's sister Gertrude and her husband Roy. While so many of the pictures from this time period of the mid to late 1920's show Gertie with no expression on her face, arms hanging at her side, this one shows a different side. I just love this jaunty pose she and Roy struck, the almost smiles hinting at a mystery they may or may not share.

I admit I spend way too much time on the internet following links and hunting down bits of information. I'd like to think it all gets tucked away in the folds of my brain for future reference, things that I don't even know will be useful to have floating around in there at some point. It helps assuage the guilt I feel when I realize I've lost an afternoon of sewing to such pursuits. That's why I sat up and took notice at Austin Kleon's Tumbler post sharing Kenneth Goldsmith's thoughts on Wasting Time On The Internet. My favorites are an observation similar to my own about people talking on bluetooth headsets ("Once, the only people who spoke to themselves were drunks; today, armies of people spout great soliloquies whilst traversing the sidewalks.") and how Twitter with its character limits affects how people write and edit, something I've experienced myself ("I often see a great deal of craft going into the composition of tweets. The constraint alone brings craft to the fore: how can I say something with such limited real estate? And then there is the game of the compositional method itself: watching the character count dwindle, then precisely editing and revising the tweet so it will fit into its allotted space. We substitute ampersands for “ands,” delete commas, double spaces, and redundant words, use hashtags, and employ URL shorteners to craft the most compressed language possible.")

Basically, he is saying it's all good, that all our reading and writing on the internet can be likened to "sampling and remixing", making connections and improving our own thinking.

The DNA of the web is embedded in 20th-century movements like Surrealism, where artists sought to live in a state like dreaming, or Pop Art, where they leveraged popular culture to make bigger points about society. Postmodernism is about sampling things and remixing them, and that is made real in this digital world.

When I teach my students about the historical preconditions for what they are doing when they waste time together — things like Surrealism or Cubism — the theoretical framework helps them know that the web isn’t a break, it’s a continuity with earlier great thinking.

And in answer to the question of what will an educated person be in the future, he responds, "We still read great books, and there is a place for great universities. But an educated person in the future will be a curious person who collects better artifacts. The ability to call up and use facts is the new education. How to tap them, how to use them." Actually, I'd say we're already there. At least, I have felt the power of the internet to track down information that previously would have meant traveling to a library or museum that held original documents or artifacts or art in their collections. Or requesting microfiche to laboriously scan through. Or searching through a library's vertical files. Some information still needs to be accessed "the old fashioned way" but with each bit of info that gets uploaded to the world wide web, the speed with which we can discover and make connections between bits of information increases, as does the breadth of our understanding of our world, what came before and what can be.

So . . . go ahead and dive down that rabbit hole! 

Log Cabin

I was very pleased at what I got done yesterday - a combination of scheduling and putting my head down. I finished the hand-quilting on the cross quilt and it will be bound and sleeved tomorrow. Then I quilted this baby quilt in the afternoon - something that surely wasn't on my radar before last Sunday.

Actually, the baby quilt is a sample from a class I taught back in Wisconsin. I stitched in the ditch by machine along the sashings, then added ties in them and the blocks. I knew this minimal quilting would never do if the quilt was ever washed - I'd used a cotton batting requiring quilting no farther apart than 2-3 inches. But I was making a point to my class and that's the way it ended up.

I rarely get the chance anymore to go to a baby shower so the quilt has languished in a storage bin. And then Sunday I was invited to an impromptu shower for the daughter of a church member who had just arrived from Florida, baby in tow and not much of a winter wardrobe for her. I had a lot of self-imposed deadlines this week, so I wasn't sure I could find the time to finish the quilting. But I did, and I was pleased that I pushed myself a bit to get it done.

Yes, Virgina, you can add quilting after the binding is on. The ties acted like safety pins, and I marked a simple diagonal grid with a ruler and herra marker. This is a good quick method to mark straight lines, the herra marker leaving a crease visible on most fabrics and nothing to remove afterwards. Are the lines perfectly spaced? No. Are they perfectly straight? No. Does it matter on a baby quilt? Not really. If perfection is your aim, this might not be the way you want to go, but if you are looking for quick and easy, and have some corners to use as guides, this works slick. These lines ended up being spaced approximately 2" apart - perfect. If I'd had more time, I might have doubled the number of lines, but 2" was adequate and doable in the hours I had.

As for the quilt itself, I call these "casual" log cabin blocks. The casual part comes from the fact that making these blocks can be approached "casually" because there's so little precision involved. Fussy cutting the center square from novelty fabric takes a bit of precision, but after that, just sew a variety of widths and angles of strips round the center square. Keep adding strips until the block is large enough to square up to 9-1/2" (or whatever pleases you - you might start with a larger or smaller center square for instance). Make sure the center square is NOT centered in the block when you do this squaring up. This adds to the "casual" flavor.

I think these blocks look good separated by a a wide sashing with corner stones and a 1/2" wide binding. For these 9 inch blocks, a finished 3 inch sashing is a good balance. Diagonal grid quilting is a good choice although an all over freemotion design would work well too. Here's the first one of these I made, using a small piece of crow fabric for my centers.

Snow...again?

Yes, folks, the daffodils got the memo about spring, but apparently the weather systems did not. Here are my stoic little daffodils, bravely pushing up buds and shrugging off a new 4 inches of snow a few days ago. It has not all melted, and the real storm is due to hit tonight. Good grief - we could have another 10 inches by tomorrow afternoon. The shovel is still on the porch, but I really didn't think I'd be using it again. I want to boycott! It may be the perfect day to spend in the studio working on the March Take It Further Challenge.

With that in mind, and since it's Friday, I was in a mood to straighten up the studio rather than get to work on a new project. There's always much to attend to once a project is finished: leftover fabric to put away, patterns and templates and notes to corral, documentation file to fill out. I discovered I needed to print more of the documentation envelopes, took time to do the math that would tell me material costs and a set a selling price. Busywork in a way, but a somewhat enjoyable transition that clears the decks to make room physically and mentally for the next round of work. I didn't, however, think it would consume nearly 3 hours, but that's how behind I get on the little stuff, how much time it takes to do record keeping. Do it now or do it later, either way, it's not going away on its own. Doing it now gives me the freedom to work unencumbered tomorrow.

Joy

"How long did it take?"...to which the only appropriate answer is "Who cares? I enjoyed every minute."

John Flynn, Quilters Newsletter December 2007

I must admit I've been struggling off and on with attitude for quite a few years. I think there was a time when I really did enjoy every minute spent on a quilting project. Then I entered a phase where almost every minute was enjoyable, and a few tasks just necessary evils. More recently I might be caught thinking "How long did it take? It took frickin' forever, a lot of which was just plain unenjoyable drudgery." I always wonder how I reach that point, and just as quickly wonder how I move back to the feeling of joy.

I'm in the joy zone at the moment. I'm still having to focus on paperwork, but I realized I couldn't do what I did last week - deny myself creative time every day in order to get it done. Instead, I'm determined to make time for the studio each day, and for me, the best way to do that is to put my studio time first. I have enjoyed my daily 2-1/2 hours, and am training myself to quit thinking - oh, I only spent 2-1/2 hours. No, I'm thinking instead, Wow, I got a whole 2-1/2 hours in today!

I've had a real need, a real drive to work on my current project It's that thing I read all the time about artists who can't wait to leap out of bed in the morning and go to the studio. I haven't felt that way in months. I've been very good at finding many other things to do before going in there. I've not looked forward to some of the things waiting for me in there. What makes this current project different?

It might be that I'm mostly in my comfort zone. I'm envisioning, solving, working my way through processes that I feel competent at and truly enjoy. Yet it's not all fun and games. It has been work, but not drudgery. I've kept a bit of challenge in it so as not to lose interest. I think that was the problem when I found myself disenchanted with the traditional quilting that I started with, that became my forte. I'd tried just about everything I wanted to, and found myself a bit bored and unchallenged with what I was working on. Everything about the art quilt was alluring and exciting and new. It was a reason to continue learning.

I've been able to bring a lot of my traditional background along with me into the art quilt world, but much of it I've had to jettison, or at least rethink. I went from confident and sure to questioning and unsure. My grandiose visions got slapped down enough times to make me gun shy. I've not been at this long enough to build up a string of successes to leave me self-assured. I'm ignoring how very long it took me to reach that sense of competence in my traditional quilting. I think I should be there now without having put in sufficient time and educating.

I picked up my knitting needles last fall for the first time in years, knitting prayer shawls in a pattern so simple I hardly need look at my hands. I found it surprisingly soothing, calming, the way hand quilting used to be. While journaling, I observed that rather than focusing on my art quilting, I'd been going off on tangents, like the knitting. I noted that the knitting "has absolutely nothing to do with anything - just pure enjoyment of the fiber, the pattern, the hand movement." Ouch! As quickly as I thought it, I realized this is what working with fabric and my quilting used to be. But lately it had become uncertainty, pressure, constant critiquing and criticizing. Great expectations and greater disappointments. No longer simple, but complex.

What I really want to do, I suppose, is meld the two worlds together, not start over. I've begun to to identify what parts of the process really do appeal, make me lose all sense of time when involved in them, and I'm figuring out how I can adapt my skills and strengths from the traditional side to this more contemporary one. I need to find a happy medium between simple and complex, continue to explore and learn and grow. But most of all, I need to find the joy again.

The joy has returned this week. Let's see if I can maintain it.

Dread & Uncertainty

Several people have asked me about being snowed in. Can I get out? Well, you can see from the picture above and below that no, I cannot. What about food? I had the foresight to stock up before the storm hit so I am fine for quite a while. It's more the lack of mail that bothers me. Below you can see just how close to the main highway I am, a highway that is plowed and passable. The truck passing by is right where my driveway comes out. There's a fence that runs on either side, obscured by the snow banks, and on the other side of that a rather wide shoulder where the mail and paper boxes are. The paper delivery person just tosses my paper onto the snowbank on his/her way by if he/she can't manage the shoulder. The post person, on the other hand, just drives on by. No mail in, no mail out. Disconcerting. Have I lost power? Thankfully, no, although many have. The snow of the weekend was very heavy. The 7-1/2 inches that fell today was very light. If I did lose power, I think my gas earth stove would still work and keep me warm. I've not had to test that.

Does being snowed in make me uncomfortable? Not really, since I'm not one who goes out every day anyway. But then I got to thinking about what if there was a fire? Or I got ill and needed to be transported to the hospital? Emergency equipment would have a time getting in. Then I got uncomfortable.

But all is well now, at least for the moment. My landlord's groundskeeper made it out today and got the majority of the snow shoved off to the side. I even think the post person will consider delivering my mail tomorrow and taking away my bills. Here she is doing her thing. And while I appreciate the driveway being passable, I was not thrilled with the 2 ft high, foot wide berm she left piled up next to the car. I had enough to move without her adding to my pile. Oh, well, be thankful that she was here at all today.

All this wild weather has helped me identify something about my character and habits that I've been struggling with. I suppose this is pretty obvious, but it dawned on me that much of my procrastination behavior is fueled by dread or uncertainty. One feeds off the other. Both drain me of energy, incentive, motivation, will.

A single bad experience can stay with me forever, causing me to dread having to face the same situation again, even if I've had positive experiences with it. This was what slowed me down last week with both projects. I kept avoiding the printing trials because I dreaded the possibility of fighting with the process as I have before. I also tried to avoid making the mount for Grid 4 because it involved using a large piece of Decor Bond. I had great success with Decor Bond up until the last 3 or 4 times when suddenly I was getting bubbling and distorting. It wasn't reacting as it always had; I couldn't think what I might be doing differently. I mourned the loss of my favorite stabilizer. I dreaded using it again because I'd lost faith I could apply it successfully.

In both cases, the answer was to take a deep breath and go slowly and meticulously through the process. In both cases, I had excellent results and got control of my demons.

Of course, there are all kinds of things in the rest of my life I dread too. Anything that might result in a confrontation. Anything that might catch me off guard and looking stupid. Anything I think is more than I can handle. When I dread facing something, I find lots of ways to procrastinate including doing nothing at all, not even something I would enjoy doing. I hate that about me - it is so counter productive and illogical. But the reality is, dread over one thing drains me of my will to do anything. I've dreaded many mornings lately, knowing the chore ahead of me with the shovel, unsure if I have the physical strength and stamina to keep up with this snow. But once I get out there and get going, I seem to manage ok, and I can get on with my day. If only I'd convince myself to get out there earlier.

As for uncertainty, it also leads to procrastination at times, but for a different reason. Uncertainty breeds worry, and worry, even more so than dread, absolutely saps my energy, my enthusiasm, my motivation. In my present situation, I never know exactly when rental maintenance will get taken care of. It could be a few days, a few weeks, a few months. I can't get the powers that be to commit, and I am very low on the priority list. So a lot of the uncomfortableness and unease I felt the last two weekends was tied to the uncertainty of if and when someone would come to plow. When the plow showed up, there was such an immense change in demeanor that it surprised me. I hadn't realized how much I was letting the uncertainty of when I'd be able to get out sap my ability to function and encourage me to procrastinate about studio work.

It got me thinking about the fear that sometimes seizes and freezes me as I approach my work. Things I have mastered, have no uncertainty about I can dive right into, thoroughly enjoy, feel good about the results. Those that are new to me, or that I have little experience with, or worse, have had a bad experience with, well, those are the ones full of uncertainty that make me want to hold back, leave me tired and lethargic and sure I cannot face them on this day. Again, the solution is to forge ahead, take that first step. But it is oh, so hard to convince myself of at times.

Now that I've identified this, I need to pinpoint strategies for controlling this fuel for procrastination. Any ideas?

Beading

I've been eking out a little time here and there to add a few beads to the angel quilt. Oh, my...I'd forgotten how addictive beading can be, and that there is no such thing as adding "just a few" beads to a project. All it took was getting out my bead stash to find these sparkly ones for the sky and water, and suddenly I was reminded of other wonderful beads in my collection. I'm contemplating beading along the top binding, beading along the angel's tunic, beading along the seam between the border & arbor (where I'd thought about using metallic thread and then didn't). It is slow contemplative work that sweeps me away.

I had a busy weekend, starting with another symphony concert Friday night, a quilt show on Saturday and a long chat with a friend on Sunday. Thus the "eking" out of time for the beading. It's part of my current approach to getting more done, putting in more studio time. I've made it a point to do something, no matter how small, at least 5 days a week. No waiting for a big chunk of time, no making excuses about how other responsibilities are using up the time I should have spent in the studio. Whether it's been 15 minutes or an hour that might be free, I've fought the urge to say it's not enough time to get anything done. And often as not, the 15 minutes stretches into 30, the hour into two. Amazing what we can convince ourselves of, both good and bad.

Speaking of convincing, I'd convinced myself that I would ignore the vendors at the quilt show. But old habits die hard, and I succumbed to this nifty tote bag pattern (designed by Sheryl Mycroft of Random Threadz) and a fat quarter of marbled fabric (by Suzi Soderlund of Marbled Arts).

What can you do in 15 minutes?

This week's ArtBizCoach.com newsletter was about blogs, but led off with a bit about how large projects can be completed by regularly spending even a small amount of time on them. This is how Alyson finally finished writing a book that had been on hold for too long. She closed with this question:

"What do you have that you want to accomplish? Can you devote 15 minutes to it each day?"

Back in December of 2005, I wrote about capturing those small bits of time here. I was thinking more in terms of the minutes I waste because I think I need large chunks of time before starting anything. But there are many little tasks that can be completed in 5, 10 or 15 minutes. Or at least a good start can be made on them. I'm still trying to master the mindset necessary to dive into a task rather than procrastinate until I think I have more time to devote to it.

When I'm in full working mode, my studio becomes a mess - sometimes to the point that I don't have a lot of open space on the work table to actually work. Once a project is done, I often shove the odds and ends to one side rather than straightening up there and then. That one is often the product of a bit of fatigue, and when I still ignore the mess the next morning, that is more of an impatience to get on with the next project.

I noticed lately that when I enter the studio, I'm not always ready to get right to work. It sometimes takes a few minutes to focus, sweep the cobwebs from the brain, decide what needs to be tackled. I found myself turning to straightening up and thought, well, there you go, procrastinating in a different direction. But in truth, taking 10 or 15 minutes at the beginning of each studio session to clear the decks not only frees up actual working space and removes visual distractions, but also allows my mind to prepare itself for the workday. Twyla Tharp in "The Creative Habit" would call this a ritual of preparation. The added bonus is that if I do this straightening up on a daily basis, I don't end up having to devote an entire work day to digging myself out.

Right now I don't have a major back burner project in mind that I want to devote 15 minutes a day to. My mind is much more thinking in terms of what I can do to avoid the backlog of paperwork and computer entry I let stack up because I think I just don't have time to face it today. Case in point: my taxes would be done had I regularly entered financial data in my Quicken program.

So perhaps what I need to devote 15 minutes a day to is my bookkeeping/computer updating in all its forms. I'll worry about that book contract later...